Chris Whitty in The Times today - don't meet friends and family unnecessarily

[MrsMiaWallis]

"Emergency patients will be turned away from hospitals, causing “avoidable deaths”, unless the public starts obeying the lockdown, England’s chief medical officer warns today.
In a stark intervention designed to shock, Professor Chris Whitty warns that everyone who meets friends and family unnecessarily is a “link in a chain” that threatens the lives of vulnerable people"

Worth noting. I had to pick up a prescription from my local town and was surprised to see so many people - mainly middle aged women, some of whom I know and had always seemed like rational intelligent people - walking around town and chatting on the pavements, unmasked, no social distancing.

Apologies I don't know how to do share tokens.

[quote Unsure33]@GhostPepperTears

But you are saying in affect that the government has over estimated the intelligence of the British public.

And that we can not follow guidance. We need more LAWs.

I think a lot of people will disagree with that .[/quote]
It is impossible to underestimate the ignorance of the general public, to be fair.

[quote Unsure33]@GhostPepperTears

But you are saying in affect that the government has over estimated the intelligence of the British public.

And that we can not follow guidance. We need more LAWs.

I think a lot of people will disagree with that .[/quote]
No, I am saying when something is guidance, it is optional. So you then have to accept some people will choose not to follow it.

You cannot leave it optional but try and convince everyone it is mandatory. That's just daft.

In case you hadn't heard Unsure33 things are not all that rosy in Japan just now.

www.cnn.com/2021/01/07/asia/japan-state-of-emergency-tokyo-coronavirus-intl-hnk/index.html

I went on a dog walk yesterday. Saw a neighbour and had a 15 min conversation whilst distanced a good 3 metres apart 😮

@IcedPurple

Yes I did say they are not virus free. But up to now they have not even tested very much .

They trust people to self isolate and follow the guidance .

I agree with what one scientist said . Part of our problem is that we live in a democratic liberal society.

@Sunshinegirl82

The reality is that there was always going to be a limit on how long people would comply with these sort of restrictions. We may now be reaching the point where people are disengaging in large enough numbers to be problematic.

If disengagement is the issue then just making rules stricter is not the answer in my view. We need to identify exactly where spread is continuing to occur and take targeted steps in those areas if further steps are necessary.

People have been told that if they don't comply bad things will happen for the best part of a year, people are desensitised to it now which was entirely predictable.

Agree. For months, we've been living in this cycle: - Ministers/advisers say things are getting worse and make vague threats about needing to take further action. Very little detail about what this might actually mean. - Huge speculation in the press/social media about what might be coming. - Additional measures announced. - Within a few days, articles and interviews start emerging saying the new measures aren't working, despite there not being enough time to assess this properly due to the lag. Cycle begins again.

It's no wonder people are becoming desensitised when goverment policy is expecting people to live in a constant state of high anxiety and fear.

Op did Whitty distinguish between inside and outside?

Iirc you can’t meet up with someone unless exercising (or support etc).

Obviously a walk can be this. But if he means outside then get guidance and his advice to match.

@campion

The article I read was only this week so I suppose it shows how quickly things can change .

When are the world graphs going to update Russia’s lies?

56000 deaths are actually 186000 ?

Worth noting. I had to pick up a prescription from my local town and was surprised to see so many people - mainly middle aged women, some of whom I know and had always seemed like rational intelligent people - walking around town and chatting on the pavements, unmasked, no social distancing

Well that makes a change, usually on here the middle aged women are berated for being the covid police!

Where I am (S Wales) everyone dodges each other outside and a lot of people are wearing masks in the street (even the pesky middle aged women). People here seem to be taking things very seriously again, as Itsnotlikethiswithotherpeople says, more seriously than the autumn. It's working too, as our numbers are slowly beginning to come down.

The vaping thing mentioned up thread is a good point. How many times do we walk passed someone vaping and smell it. Well that could well be vapours containing Covid.

so,

• kids only in school if both parents are critical workers,
• nurseries ditto,
• reiterate rules fpr employers to prevent commuting and office mixing,
• reiterate what a support bubble is,
• mask wearing 100% of the time outside the home,
• exercise locally,
• shop solo,
• close more shops,
• close take away collection points,
• tell shops to keep premises ventilated,
• police and enforce more?

Be a part of the solution not cause!

Keep common sense common and moderate your behaviour as there is a real medical emergency pandemic war out there!

Just because there are no bombs and bullets like a traditional war the enemy is silent and deadly as inadvertent asymptomatic super spreading is not inadvertent as if you are in close proximity to someone who you don’t know of their Covid status of as untested - you are a part of the cause not solution! This potentially deadly (or long Covid) disease is not spreading itself. It’s the Covidiots who are evidently doing the perpetual super spreading unnecessarily as you are the vector for Covid tag roulette! Otherwise why the forever mutating super spreading?

Chris Whitty has stood beside Johnson, Hancock and others and agreed with them. He didn't condemn Cummings. I don't think he has any credibility left and we need someone people can trust doing his job.

[quote Unsure33]@GhostPepperTears

But you are saying in affect that the government has over estimated the intelligence of the British public.

And that we can not follow guidance. We need more LAWs.

I think a lot of people will disagree with that .[/quote]
I’m not sure about that. It seems to be that nobody thinks about just because they CAN do something, it doesn’t mean that they SHOULD. Have you noticed how threads go on here?

• government announce change to guidance

• everyone comes on here to moan it’s too late or too soon for said guidance

• everyone immediately starts trying to look for reasons why the new guidance doesn’t apply to them

-everyone starts pushing at the boundaries of said guidance.

Just seeing all my neighbours with people in and out of their houses, groups of people bumping into each other and chatting for ages on the pavement with no distancing, I’m pretty sure that the compliance figure is less than the 90% SAGE have optimistically quoted.

I really don’t think giving people the latitude to use their own judgment is working.

There are networks of people developing who are doing the walking with 1 person as a social thing.

Going for a walk is the new going for a drink. My FIL walks regularly with his little group of pals Bob on a Monday and Bill on a Tuesday etc. Usually around 4 a week. Bob and Bill also walk with lots of others multiple times per week.

Bob caught covid from one of his other walking pals and is now v poorly. His other walking pal caught it of another walking pal.

I haven't seen my family at all really but if FIL fancies a natter with his sister he just meets her for a walk, nephew - lovely let's have a walk.

These walks last hours and hours some days and I can't believe they mange 2m between them at all times. They were all under the impression being outdoors meant they wouldnt catch it but Bob's situation is making them think twice.

@Trickyboy

So frustrating.

1.The government NEEDS to shut down AND IMPOSE furlough on MOST businesses except those which are GENUINELY essential. (I have a friend being forced to work for a well known home furnishing chain who is REQUIRED to continue visiting customers homes to fit curtains . On what planet is a new set of curtains ESSENTIAL? It's this kind of greed over responsibility, that needs to be stopped. Both by the greedy employer and the brain dead customers who are offered the choice ALWAYS put having their curtains fitted above their chances of catching this virus. It's unfathomable . Especially as the customer base is 65-85... she is expected to make up to 5 visits a day. In and out of peoples homes where she stays for 1-2yrs a time.

2.People who are placing kids in school because 'they're entitled to' but don't actually NEED to, need to give their heads a fucking wobble and learn a bit of social responsibility. No you're stress of having kids at home does not trump someone else's right to life.

3.Finally people need to STOP being such childish idiots . Just because there isn't a law doesn't mean you should do something which is obviously going to transmit the virus. !
Surely with over 1k people a day dying , people can make that connection without a law and stop .

Do you realise that money has to come from somewhere to actually pay for the NHS, right?

Also - see my point about locking everything further down now will not have any impact on death rates for weeks and weeks.

unsure33. Some people can do some things themselves - ie choose not to go to Homebase because they have cabin fever and want a spider plant. Some people either won’t stay in where possible and will bend the rules whenever possible and with a new highly infectious variant will add a link to the chain of infection. Some employers will insist staff come in. They will only not do so if it is made law. Choice needs to be taken out of the equation as much as possible as too many through ignorance, rebellion, compliance fatigue will be out and about.

I think the answer is for everyone to heed the 'stay at home' message and stay at home as much as possible. Cut out the trips to Costa, to have a mooch round B&M, M&S etc.

I know people have to go to work, I do too.

@wanderings

Is it melodrama that 80K people have died and 1K a day recently? How many people is it who die every year under normal circumstances, 670K or something? And does life have a 100% mortality rate, or is it 99%?

What is the point of keeping us all alive if our reward for staying alive is this extremely miserable existence? And as for "it's not for much longer, because of the vaccine..." I'll believe that when it happens, not before. I haven't forgotten "we can turn this virus around in twelve weeks".

Well, with the last sentence, I believe the opposite of whatever Boris Johnson says going back way further than when he became PM.

@midgebabe

The OP mentions people chatting outside

One fairly consistent message is that outside is safer than inside

People read it is outside is safe. With the old variant in the summer 6 to 10% of infections were caught outside , in crowded spaces or people chatting. Cold weather will increase the ease of outside transmission

Can you link to anything that supports that statistic please? I would have expected it to be much, much lower and can’t find anything that supports that high a percentage.

I’ll keep exercising outside but not with someone else. If I do bump into a friend we chat at a distance and that’s it.

That should be ok I reckon.. what do others do

He is saying limit your social interactions, not that you have to keep to the rules.

So, whilst you are allowed to have a child care support bubble, do you really need to use it; you can have a support bubble but do you really need to meet daily; you can exercise with another person but does that need to be a different person every day?

In parts of London 1 in 20 people currently have the virus. It's really easy to see how it is spreading so quickly. Just avoid as many interactions as possible.

@Wherediditgo

How many times?? The numbers we are seeing NOW are due to mixing and events that happened AT LEAST 2 weeks ago. We weren’t in lockdown 2 weeks ago. It was Christmas two weeks ago when people were allowed to mix. No amount of locking anything further down is going to stop the case numbers rising RIGHT NOW. We could all live in hazmat suits from this very second and still case numbers will continue to rise for at least another week or two as the lockdown only came in to force 5 days ago!!

Depends where you live. In my area we went straight into tier 4 after the November lockdown, so no-one should have been mixing indoors for over two months. Christmas mixing was completely cancelled in all tier 4 areas too. Our rolling rate is still over 1,000 per 100,000.

The problem I have with this is that I still cannot wfh. I have to see members of the general public no matter where they are from. Colleagues have complained about how people from tier 4 have been allowed into our office and still we are told we have to do it. So yes, I will go out for a walk its about the only 'enjoyment' and I use that term losley, I get. I don't meet up with anyone else though.
I think a lot of people are at the point where they are exasberated. I've spoken to work colleagues who had had family members over on Boxing day. We are bloody exhausted and have worked throughout without a break, I'm not going to grass them up . They say as long as I have to keep coming out to work, exposing my child to nursery or school etc then I will see my mother/father etc.
I really feel for Chris Whittey, you could see from the talk Boris gave saying have 5 days of fun at Christmas that he did not agree with it at all. He himself said that no, he would not hug his grandmother.
Even so I've heard of a family I know having 5 households over on Christmas day. This included school children with separated parents who travel between both homes AND see all different sets of grandparents plus a 17 year old who at the time was attending a college where I see the packed buses passing rammed with students sat side by side not wearing masks. Lord knows how many different people they have all mingled with. Any consequence of this has yet to be seen so no doubt the figures will keep rising for several weeks.
I know of people who went their child into school in 4th January only to become infected with covid from another pupil.

@BuggerBognor

I think media melodrama fatigue has set in - we’ve been hearing “doom” from the press since March. Psychologically humans are not built for sustained peril. Many are now just thinking “whatever”. Even my DM, who would have been the first to shop a neighbor for exercising twice in LD1 , has said she thinks she’d rather pop her clogs now than live like this for much longer. I concur.

Exactly. I remember hearing about people going out dancing in London during WW2, despite the air raids, and thinking “how could they take the risk?”. But with any kind of sustained risk, eventually people tire of curtailing their activities, and the fear just wanes.

I don’t actually break the rules, but any fear I had last April has well and truly gone. Like it or not, my subconscious tells me that I’ve been fine so far, so why would that change now!

I now follow the rules for the greater good. But once the fear factor has gone , many people won’t.